Look at me! Can you see the pain in my eyes; the hurt in my soul; the fakeness in my smile?

When you look at me do you see the little lost African American girl or the mature

woman that writing poetry has helped to be? I once had no voice strangers coming up

to me asking if I was deaf or mute because I did not speak so I became a parrot mimicking 

what I thought was expected of me. Never saying what I really felt or thought because 

I was afraid of what their perception of me would be. I thought would they see the

girl with the absentee father or the girl that had the mother with the mental and health

problems. My heart was breaking from all the pain and keeping quiet,

breaking like a tree trunk that was stricken by an axe over and over again.

Then I found my voice and all it took was a pen and a pad. The words kept coming and

the tears kept flowing, with every word and every filled page I felt my burdens and insecurities

lifting off of me. Poetry was once my voice box my healer but now it is my lover 

and best friend. The thing that I run to, that pushes me, that reminds me of where I've been, and where I never want to be.